Cui Bono?

If we've said it once, we've said it 100 times: never trust anyone holding public office.  Related to that is our other axiom: the System cannot be reformed from within; it must be dismantled and neutralized.

Since Franklin Roosevelt's first (of four) term, it has been a tradition to give new presidents 100 days to get their act together.  Out of curiosity and tradition, I was willing to give Donald Trump 100 days to show his true colors.  It only took less than 90.

I think it is time to resign to the fact that Trump is just another Neocon warmonger.  Had Hillary been elected, we might have actually had the country up in arms against any military intervention on the scale and premises of the Trump attack on Syria.  Instead, all those folks who fell for his marketing are unwilling to bail on him, since they literally shed sweat, blood and tears to get him elected as a reformer.

Took the man all of a few weeks to dump a steaming pile of cruise missiles on their hopes and dreams.  I don't care how you argue this, killing four people for geopolitical advantage is no better than any other tin-pot dictator on the planet.

So, the entire world has polarized over this event, with the usual suspects lining up in praise of Trump's "decisiveness" on one side (to include Merkel, Abe, Gentiloni, etc.), and the folks who elected Trump to change things on the other.

But of course, the folks who stop by the Far Side want to know our take on things, which is always just a bit different from the usual choices that we are all supposed to make under the Hegelian Dialectic.  I hope I won't disappoint.

The official Far Side take is that the entire thing, from top to bottom, is Political Theater, likely coordinated at the lowest levels (I refuse to acknowledge the slime are higher than the rest of us), and professionally staged to achieve a number of goals, the most important (to them) is selling Trump as a global leader.

First off, the "Chemical Weapons" attack.

All the video I've seen from the site of the "attack" looks and feels, at least to me as a professional film and video guy, like a staged event.  When I saw the video of the "victims" lying in the street, I was immediately reminded of the scene of a New Mexico town in The Andromeda Strain.  The lighting was just too good.   The depth of focus was just too right.  The "bodies" were just a little too arranged.  The bodie

When watching video, I always imagine the camera crew.  Who is taking the pictures and where are they in the scheme of things?  Sarin gas is a highly toxic substance, with just the tiniest amount being enough to kill or severely maim a human being.  Was the camera crew in full environmental suits with respirators?  If so, did they have special camera and sound gear that allowed them to record the scene wearing thick gloves?  And did they have to destroy all their equipment (or at least abandon it on-site) after they had recorded their pictures?

And what about the "doctor" who was supposedly recording from a hospital hallway, offering to sell interviews to the highest bidder rather than caring for patients?  In the background, "white helmets" were hauling "bodies" around without a single piece of protective gear - including gloves.

Nope, I'm not buying the whole "attack" thing.  It reminds me too much of gamed scenarios were locals are hired as extras to play victims for training purposes.  One need only to watch Wag The Dog to see how these things are done.  And don't forget the recent ad in German newspapers seeking folks to play townies for military training games.  In fact, going back a bit further, what about all those "training exercises" under Obama where hundreds of extras were hired to stage protects and civil unrest for "training purposes".  This scenario is well within the range of plausible.

Next up, the "air raid".

By all accounts, Trump unleashed 59 aging Tomahawk cruise missiles in a "surgical" strike on an air base well within sovereign territory for which the US Congress had not issued a declaration of war in retaliation for an "attack" (see above) that did not affect the US nor any of its citizens.  In other words, an unprovoked act of aggression on a sovereign nation.

Of the 59 Tomahawks, less than 40% hit the target, destroying (according to Major General Igor Konashenkov) six broken-down MiG-23s and causing so little damage to the airport that it was up and running hours later supporting anti-ISIS raids.  The Major General speculated that the 59 Tomahawks were part of aging inventory that needed to be blown off so Trump could throw a bone to the Military-Industrial Complex in the form of an order for some fresh toys.

Thus, from the Far Side perspective, the sarin attack was a professionally staged event to provide justification for an air strike that not only blew off some aging inventory, but was nothing more than theater to demonstrate Trump's "leadership and resolve" in international affairs.  He is now being hailed as the true leader of the free world, which apparently is defined as those powers willing to violate international law with unprovoked acts of war against non-aggressor nations.

I would be completely unsurprised if President P. T. Barnum...er, Trump, set the whole thing up to buy himself credibility.  After all, the Russians were warned an hour in advance and had time to clear the air strip of vital personnel and materiel, so there seems to have been some collusion between Trump and Putin on this.

Regardless, the raid supposedly puts the entire question of Russian influence to rest and establishes Trump as the firm, decisive Grand Poobah on the international stage.

Folks can choose either of the two options allowed by the elites: 1) Trump is a great leader, or 2) Trump violated his campaign promises and alienated his support base.

I prefer to see the whole thing, and with good reason, as a professionally staged media event to achieve a number of public relations goals, as well as upgrade some military hardware, while at the same time send the message that the US is back and it ain't taking shit off nobody.

No matter what side you choose, though, the event proves our case that all governments are evil and no system can be reformed from within.  Even if my scenario is correct and no one was hurt and the whole thing was theater, it is the perception of what happened and the crass attempt to manipulate that perception on the part of politicians and media that makes the entire thing evil and rotten to the core.

No one and nothing can be trusted on the geopolitical stage.  It is all perception management, and in the worst case scenario, buying leadership credits with human lives.  Bashir Assad stood to gain nothing from a chemical attack, especially since he was clearly winning against al-Qaeda/ISIS/CIA assets.  The only entities that stood to gain anything here were Trump and the Military-Industrial Complex, making Trump an obvious stooge of the latter and an utter disappointment to anyone who supported him as a change agent.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms."

- As You Like It, Act !!, Scene VII

Apocollapse Now

Here we are, barely three months post-meteoric disaster, nine months post-Mayan demise, and fourteen years post-computer melt-down, and humanity seems just as hell-bent to destroy itself as ever.  I mean, my God!, Tebow released and Justin Beiber attacked?!  What is this world coming to?  Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

The whole Syria thing appears to be a major PR disaster for the Hidden Hand.  The UK parliament found some balls after more than 200 years and told 10 Downing to stuff their guns back in their pants.  This led the Great Peacemaker (note that was the name of a famous pistol in the Old West and a missile system, too) has had to back down a bit and turn to - gasp! - Congress for the OK to drone the hell out of another brown country.  The French are demanding a vote on the subject (no surprise there).  And the Germans are destroying surveillance cameras and giving Snowden awards.  There's some sensible folks - but then they have a lot of experience with dictators.

What worries me is that this whole apocollapse theater is a ruse to some greater end.  It's not like the Hidden Hand to give a flying flip about what the masses demand, so I smell a rat when these sorts of things happen.  Could be a horrible attack on the EU/US/UK is in the offing and it will be blamed on the anti-war crowd, which will neuter that faction and rally the masses around the gun barrel.

Maybe Putin called Bammy and said, "You vill back down or I vill take you on glorious hunting trip vit my old friend Dick Cheney, Comrade."

Heck, maybe they just figured that war on 15 fronts was not feasible, even with robotic armies and the BRICS nations getting antsy.  Surely it had nothing to do with folks figuring out that those Facebook photos of chemical weapon victims were a sham and that social media does not constitute a credible information source.  Perhaps human have evolved beyond William Randolph Hearst's immortal quote, "Give me the pictures and I'll provide the war," later echoed by Charles Foster Kane.  Yellow journalism never dies, just evolves.

In any event, the Saudi puppets really bungled this assignment and will likely face regime change now.

Whatever the reason, we can all breathe a little easier for the moment.  The US is contained for the time being and will have to suffice with electrocuting, gassing and raiding its own citizens to death.

In the meantime, the bioweapon that only attacks Semitic people, called MERS, continues to prove that Israelis are not Semites, and so that whole argument can be dispensed with now.  If I'm wrong, then how come the MERS virus only affects people from the Arabian peninsula?  Why is it that after the Hajj, the virus only spread to other Arabian countries, and didn't follow folks home to other countries?  You be the judge.

Where to now?  Humanity seems fixated on destroying itself.  No matter how many alpcollapses we survive, we generate more in their wake.  Perhaps we should round up all the nihilists, place them in a remote corner of Greenland and nuke them.  That way, they get their holocaust and the rest of us can get about our business without someone trying to end the world all the damn time.

Maybe the resistance against leveling Syria represents the first nascent step towards a more healthy lifestyle and outlook on the part of humans.  Maybe we're finally starting to realize that it's better to build a bright, shiny future than to constantly hope for the worst - if not actively work towards it.  Maybe humanity is maturing just a little and emerging from the teen-angst death obsession phase of growing up.  Maybe there is hope after all that the nihilists are losing their sway over the masses and folks are starting to behave like Burt Reynolds at the end of The End.  "I wanna livvvve!"  Maybe...

Naw, too much to ask for.

Of Bombs And Bullies

Lately there has been a marked increase in the number of hand-wringing articles on the subject of Americans leaving the US and the jump in those renouncing their citizenship in the past year.  As one of my acquaintances back home noted, "Hell, even the wetbacks are swimming back!"

The answer is both simple and obvious.  The same reason that many Germans left Fascist Germany - they don't agree with the politics and can't stand the culture.

One prime example of why Americans are bugging out is the Syria fiasco.  The US has for many years started wars for no better reasons than commerce and hand-picking successor regimes.  If other nations pulled half the crap that the US does in foreign countries, the people would be up in arms.  Yet, they can't fathom why the world increasingly hates America, and why so many folks are getting the hell out.

Americans are so steeped in propaganda from the age of 1 that they just can't imagine why anyone would want to leave the country.  They can't conceive of people not wanting government shoved into every orifice of their being around the clock.  It doesn't compute that folks would disagree with a belligerent foreign policy.  And surely no one would disagree with a centuries-long habit of killing large numbers of brown people.

Americans think that America is the greatest country on Earth.  They can't separate the brilliant founding ideals of the nation from the actual practice.  They think, "Hey, we invented the light bulb, the telephone and the automobile, not to mention landing on the Moon!"  Doesn't occur to most of them that the last great achievement the nation had was almost 50 years ago.

Hello, America...wake up.  G. W. Schrub made Edison's lamp illegal in favor of Frenchman Alexandre Edmond Becquerel's fluorescent lamps.  Swedish and Japanese companies make the most popular telephones today.  Detroit has declared bankruptcy and American cars are hardly made in the US anymore.  And NASA no longer has a manned space program.  The handful of astronauts it sends to the space station hitch rides with Russia - who could pull the plug on US manned access to space because of Syria.  Furthermore, the US hasn't returned a man to the Moon since the early 70s.

Add to the severe economic decline of America its moral and ethical decay over the past 60 years.  The US has gone from a position of moral and economic authority immediately following WW2 to a third-rate bully that ignores international law, violates the national sovereignty of nearly every other nation on Earth, and treats its own citizenry like criminals with an a priori assumption of guilt.

America no longer has anything to offer a person of conscience.  The various levels of government in the US systematically violates every aspect of the individual's dignity and security.  The citizen carries a massive tax burden to pay for unauthorized debt and unconstitutional wars.  The police have gotten out of hand in addition to now being just one of a dozen agencies that all feel at liberty to violate human rights at will and with impunity.  Finally, any attempt to redress grievances with the government are treated with derision and disdain by said government.

So, what exactly are the selling points for life in the US?  Because from where I stand, there are none at all.

In fact, the current saber-rattling in Syria makes me all the more certain that I made the right choice to leave the US.  I can not in any way support the military adventurism and the economic interventionism practiced by the US government.  I can not abide the way that nation destroys families through an educational system and meddlesome agencies whose purposes are to undermine parental authority and transfer family loyalty to the state.  Finally, I vehemently disagree with Washington's on-going policy of military interventionism on the flimsiest of justifications as a means of boosting profits for favored corporations.

The fact that Americans are asking such silly questions as, "Why Are Americans Leaving The US" shows the willful ignorance of the American populace.  I say willful because the internet offers dozens on alternatives to the propaganda outlets at home.  That they prefer CNN and Fox to real information shows the depth of the ignorance and/or the support that so many profess to their government.

Americans also display their corruption and complicity through repeated election of the same corrupt politicians, despite all evidence of the depravity of said politicians, based solely on being bought off by government pork projects.  If this is not the ultimate cynical act of people who worship their own corruption, then nothing is.

If Americans had a real desire to change things, they could.  There are 300 million citizens versus a few thousand minions.  The only excuse for not changing things is willful participation in the moral decay of the nation, with the possible addition of laziness and greed as additional motives.

The exodus of citizens from America highlights the hopelessness of having ethics and integrity in a nation of ignorance and degeneracy.  About the only position with a future in America is gang member, as recent reports demonstrate.  Additionally, the only prop left under the American economy is invading, killing and destroying other nations.  That is no basis for a healthy and viable future.

The intellectuals and business people who left Germany with the rise of Fascism were the only ones left to rebuild that country after the entire Earth massed to destroy it.  Likewise, those folks bailing out of America today may end up being the only hope for rebuilding that country once the rest of the world has tired of its hubris.  And that day may be coming soon.

The pretension of a gas attack in Syria as a way to justify (on the loosest of grounds) American military interventionism in yet another country may be the last straw.  The world has grown weary of America's regime changes and death for democracy campaigns.  The dominoes are decidedly lined up against the US should it decide to strike Syria.  The first casualty in the war against the resurrection of Fascism will likely be Israel.  The world is little fooled, at least any more, by the antics of the Zionists whose habit is to break a stick over its neighbors' heads, then run to hide behind Uncle Sugar.

The bully always gets his comeuppance and the US is no exception.  The American people would do well to read the tea leaves of history to see what the future holds.  A mass exodus of citizens is only one of many signs now visible.

Seventy years ago, it nearly destroyed our civilization to put one regime in a country the size of Texas back in its place.  What will it take to contain the ambitions and decadence and the US?

I Walked, I Crawled, Iran

Hey kids!  Welcome to another exciting round of DoubleThink, the game where we train ourselves to be unthinking mules serving the evil faceless Massah!

Today's exercise:

• 2001 Iraq - al Qaeda is our enemy, they have always been our enemy.
• 2011 Libya- al Qaeda is our friend.  They have always been our friend.
• 2012 Syria - al Qaeda is our enemy, they have always been our frie...enemy.  (Oops...)

OK, got that square now?  And while we're at it, China is our life-blood, I mean they want to destroy us, I mean our economic partner, I mean...  You can insert Russia in there too, since we hate them again, but we can't get to our nice little space station without them.

Sorry, I don't buy any of it.  I'm cursed with being able to remember more than two minutes ago.

Today, I keep seeing the headline that Iran wants to blow up the Statue of Liberty.  That's so much hog-wash on so many levels.  Let's look at a few.

First, the source is ex-CIA.  Now, I don't know about you, but when I see the letters 'c', 'i' and 'a' followed by the word 'says,' I immediately close out everything that follows.  That organization was founded by Nazi left-overs and has gone down hill ever since.  Every singe word, bar none, that comes out of the CIA is complete rubbish, even if they tell you the time and it agrees with the atomic clock at the Naval Observatory.

Second, the Statue of Liberty was a gift from that shining become of liberty and democracy, France.  I was meant to symbolize the freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the country over which the statue stands.  However, everything it symbolizes has been trampled under foot, shredded, burned, and shat upon.  It was a process that began in 1861, with the War of Yankee Aggression, and was completed with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2002.  Frankly, everything the statue was meanth to symbolize is but a distant memory, even for us old farts.

Third, assuming the US strikes first on Iran, they have every moral and legal right to strike back in any way they can.  Sorry, but that's the God's honest truth.  I don't care how much hysterical non-sense the Israelis and US lapdogs spew, if the US strikes first, Iran has the right to defend itself, including striking the US mainland if it can.  And of all the countries the US has shat on over the past century or so, Iran certainly has the ability to hit back.

That statement may shock some of the more gullible readers whose conditioning is a bit deeper than the rest.  So we should probably examine it a bit, just to make sure no one walks away thinking I am promoting the idea.  I'm simply pointing out the moral and legal right, under Natural Law and centuries of international law, for a country to attack an invader and defend itself.  In fact, it's a fundamental right recognized in US law.  Shooting a home invader in most States will not get the home owner charged with a crime.

Since the deeply conditioned readers will point to all of Iran's crimes, lets examine them for a moment to make sure we're not missing anything.

Iran is developing nukes.  OK, so what?  Both of the countries making endless noise about attcking Iran are up to their eye-teeth in nukes.  The US has actually dropped nukes on Japan, and used DU ammunition in several countries, which is just as bad, radiation-wise.  The Israelis have used DU ammo, as well as dropped burning phosphorous on innocent populations.  If I were Iran, I'd be working my ass off to get a couple of nukes by sometime tomorrow.

Iran is developing nuclear reactors.  Yo...bozo...every developed nation on Earth has them.  Even Indonesia.  In fact, Japan has poisoned the entire northern hemisphere with a couple of theirs.  If Iran wants a couple to diversify their grid, and they're willing to put up with the risks that less intelligent nations have taken, that's their business.

Iran is a threat.  Iran hasn't invaded another nation in over 300 years.  It's last war was against Iraq, who invaded them, and were supported by the US who gave Saddam Hussein illegal chemical and biological weapons to use on the Iranians who were lawfully defending their nation.  The only overt threats Iran has made are to retaliate against any aggressor.  Fair enough.

Iran destroyed the US embassy and took prisoners back in 1980.  A bit late to get 'em for that, don't you think?  Besides, they were rather upset at having been manipulated by the US and UK for a century, and having rather unpleasant dictators installed over them and supported by same.  Frankly, any flatulent red-neck arm-chair general in Podunk, USA would have done the same...or at least sent the neightbor's kid to do it.

Iran's navy just docked in Syria and they are building up their military.  Well, duh.  Siryah's president invited them and the Russians.  They didn't invite the US, which is hovering offshore like a swarm of killer bees, but which docks itself in other nations' ports all the time.  Of course, the US calls it goodwill missions, but I hardly think having nuclear-capable ships loaded with all kinds of weapons as a hearty show of good faith.  On the other hand, this is the first time I can remember ever hearing about Iran's navy going anywhere outside of their territorial waters.

Iran cut off oil to the UK and France.  And...your point is?  Those two have done far worse to Iran, and for far longer.  Besides, how smart would it be to sell fuel to a bunch of jerks who are going to turn around and shoot it back at you?  The US has been kicking its collective ass for doing that with Japan for 60 years.  I call that rather intelligent on the part of the Iranians.

Iran wants to take gold and other currency, instead of dollars, for their oil.  Yup, it's THEIR oil, and given the general state of the US dollar right now, I don't blame them.  I don't accept dollars, either.  I always lose money on the exchange rates.  I prefer rupiah or yuan, myself.  Can't fault the Iranians there.  And since it's THEIR oil, they can accept dirt clods and cow pies for it, if they wanted.

Any other points?  As far as I can see, Iran has been more than patient in the face of a global campaign to smear them.  They have shown remarkable poise and restraint in the face of highly aggressive sanctions and military build-ups off their coast, not to mention the dozens of US military bases that surround them.

They have held their hand even though the US has amitted that Israel has been conducting covert acts of war on Iranian soil, going as far as outright murder of Iranians worldwide.

The point of all this is, if the US attacks Iran unprovoked and based solely on the shabby excuses enumerated here, then Iran has every right to fight back.  That includes bombing US cities and cultural (albeit useless) icons.  Anyone who gets upset by that is a hardcore idiot, or evil, or both.

For too long, the US has attacked other nations with impunity, partly because they have selected poor, unarmed countries, and partly because those countries haven't had the ability to project force at a distance.  However, as the US becomes more and more aggressive, and attacks more nations unprovoked, eventually it will run afoul of a nation who can strike back, and who might have bigger friends willing to help.

Bullies can go on for a long time, but they never go on forever.  Eventually, someone gets tired enough and has nothing to lose by hitting back.  The bully is rarely ready for it, and he usually run away in terror when it finally happens.

The US is already showing signs of fear.  The development of unmanned drones and robotic soldiers is a sure sign that someone in the Pentagram is getting cold feet.  They are sending machines to do a man's job, because they know they are wrong and aren't willing to show their faces.

The good people of the US had better stand up to their rogue government and shut down its Death Squads before one of the kids on the block gets tired and starts punching back.  Americans aren't ready for that.  No living American has seen war on their own streets.  They've never walked past bombed out houses next door or stepped over shredded bodies on the way to the grocery store.

American will scream bloody murder (literally and metaphorically) when it happens.  They will hop up and down wanting revenge, not remembering the death and destruction on their own hands.  It has all been sanitized and packaged for them on the evening propaganda.  It's all very theoretical and far away from them. But what happens when it's your neighborhood and your neighbors?  What happens when Joe Sixpack is kneeling in the rubble of his house holding the torn body of his oldest child?

It's all scenes that the US has caused in other countries countless numbers of times over the past 60 years.  Are Americans ready to live what they have doled out?

I seriously doubt it.

Americans need to seriously consider these facts when they are pulling the voting levers over the next couple of months.  They need to ponder these scenes when writing their checks to the IRS not long after that.  They are playing with fire and not questioning the consequences.

Go read up on the sacking of Rome.  Without a severe change of course, it can and will come to your home soon enough.  As the US economy falters and it weakens from the inside, the wolves at the door are growing in number.  They are pacing, watching and waiting.  Eventually, the US will make a mistake or show a weakness, and the wolves will pounce.

All those Bible-thumping presidential candidates seem to have forgotten one of the best-known lines in the whole book, "He who lives by the sword shall die by it."

It's all fine and good when the Home Team is winning, but the streak will end and it will be nasty.  Might want to prepare youself.  Kids who play with matches get burned.